33 Haunting Photos From The Killing Fields Of The Cambodian Genocide

In the late 1970s, up to 3 million people died in the Killing Fields of the Cambodian genocide. This is what it looked like.

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A distraught woman cries over the body of her husband, killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A group of women huddle together, 1975.Romano Cagnoni/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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A terrified prisoner is photographed inside the Tuol Sleng prison.

Of the nearly 20,000 people locked in Tuol Sleng, only seven survived.

Phnom Penh.Wikimedia Commons

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Skulls lie in the killing fields of Choeung Ek.

1981.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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Khmer Rouge soldiers drive through the capital.

Phnom Penh. 1975.SJOBERG/AFP/Getty Images

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Child soldiers working for the Khmer Rouge show off their machine guns.

Galaw, Cambodia. Circa 1979.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A child soldier with a human skull resting on the tip of his rifle.

Dei Kraham, Cambodia. 1973.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A family of starving refugees struggle to make their way across the border to Thailand.

Phnom Penh. 1979.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A crowd gathers around a civilian killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

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A child soldier stands over a blindfolded soldier.

Though the atrocities of the killing fields were unjustifiably horrible, this photo shows a more complex version of the story. Here, the child soldier is fighting for the Khmer Republic - and his prisoner is a member of the Khmer Rouge.

Angkor Chey, Cambodia. 1973.Bettmann/Getty Images

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Refugees peer through the gate to the French Embassy, begging to get in.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A soldier stands by a mass grave.

Oudong, Cambodia. 1981.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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An employee at the French Embassy offers a cigarette to a Khmer Rouge soldier.

The gate to the embassy, by this time, had been barricaded off with barbed wire.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Express/Archive Photos/Getty Images

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A woman rides a bicycle by a stack of destroyed cars, cast aside by the Khmer Rouge as of symbol of the bourgeoisie.

Phnom Penh. 1979.John Bryson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

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At the twilight of the Cambodian Civil War, the people of Phnom Penh start to evacuate, as the burning gasoline depot behind them signals the arrival of the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh. 1975.CLAUDE JUVENAL/AFP/Getty Images

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Cambodians climb over a fence, trying to escape to the French Embassy.

Phnom Penh. 1975.SJOBERG/AFP/Getty Images

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Young refugees hide under tall grass, escaping from the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

Aranyaprathet, Thailand. 1979.Henri Bureau/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

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A young girl and her baby, inside of Tuol Sleng.

Phnom Penh.Wikimedia Commons

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Thousands of refugees prepare to evacuate the capital, fleeing from the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh. 1975.AFP/AFP/Getty Images

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Cambodians try to help an injured civilian.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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As the Khmer Rouge moves into the capital, thousands of people abandon their country in fear of what's to come.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A line of a thousand Cambodian refugees makes it into Thailand.

Klong Kwang, Thailand. 1979.Bettmann/Getty Images

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The French Embassy in Phnom Penh struggles to handle the hordes of people begging for protection.

1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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Injured people hide out in the hospital, before the capital was under complete Khmer Rouge control.

Phnom Penh. 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A Thai border patrolman finds a dead child that was killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Thailand. 1977.Bettmann/Getty Images

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Starving refugees get help from a Thai relief mission, laying in tents near the border.

Pailin, Cambodia. 1979.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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Cambodian soldiers who fought against the Khmer Rouge in the Olympic Stadium, the place the Khmer Rouge used for their executions, Phnom Penh, 1975.Roland Neveu/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A dead man's body lies on the ground at Tuol Sleng, following his murder by the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh.Wikimedia Commons

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A field of people massacred by the Khmer Rouge.

My Duc, Vietnam. 1978.Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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A dead man, with his shirt ripped open, lies on the cold ground of Tuol Sleng.

Phnom Penh.Wikimedia Commons

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A young boy picks up a soldier's helmet as the victorious Khmer Rouge parades through the streets of his city.

Phnom Penh. 1975.SJOBERG/AFP/Getty Images

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A prisoner bleeds on the floor of Tuol Sleng.

Phnom Penh.Wikimedia Commons

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A Cambodian soldier fighting against the Khmer Rouger is captured in Thailand.

Aranyaprathet, Thailand. 1985.Alex Bowie/Getty Images

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33 Haunting Photos From The Killing Fields Of The Cambodian Genocide

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Few horrors compare to the Killing Fields of the Cambodian genocide.

Over four short years, from 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge systematically exterminated up to 3 million people. The people of Cambodia had to live in fear, knowing that they might be the next one dragged out to the Killing Fields. The chances of being chosen were indeed high – by the end of the massacre, the Khmer Rouge had wiped out nearly 25 percent of the population.

The nightmare began in Phnom Penh, with the end of the Cambodian Civil War. It was the last stronghold of the right-wing, military-led Khmer Republic, and with its fall, Cambodia came into the hands of the dictator Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge regime.

When the Khmer Rouge emerged from the civil war victorious and marched down the streets, thousands of terrified people fled, some rushing for the border with Thailand while others flooded the gates of the French Embassy.

The massacres soon began and the Cambodian genocide was underway. The fighters who had stood up against the Khmer Rouge were executed en masse. Then the Khmer Rouge turned on civilians, driving the people into the countryside and killing thousands in the process.

Soon, the Khmer Rouge was rounding up anyone who did anything that could be seen as capitalist. Selling a product or talking to anyone from the world beyond Cambodia's borders was treated like an act of treason. Those caught were sent to so-called re-education camps like Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, a fate that nearly always meant getting tortured and killed.

Adults were forced to dig their own graves before they were slaughtered with spades and sharpened bamboo. Their children, meanwhile, were smashed to death against the trunks of trees and thrown into the mass graves where their parents lay.

There were more than 150 of these execution centers across the country. One of the most brutal, Tuol Sleng, was a former school that transformed into a factory of death. About 20,000 people ended up locked inside of its walls – and only seven got out alive.

The massacres on the Killing Fields stopped when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and brought an end to the Khmer Rouge. As the Vietnamese marched through Cambodia, they found places like Tuol Sleng. They uncovered mass graves full of thousands of human remains – and found photos of some of the many people who had been lost in the Cambodian genocide.

After learning about the Killing Fields and the Cambodian Genocide, view some haunting portraits of prisoners under the Khmer Rouge and learn more about the Pol Pot. Then, learn about the brutality of Belgium's Leopold II and his genocide in Africa.